The present invention relates to an object recognize apparatus for recognizing items such as a type and a position of parts, and in particular, to an object recognize apparatus suitable for recognizing a complicated object (a pattern, a mark, or the like) including a plurality of components.
In the conventional apparatuses, there have been an apparatus as described in the JP-A-62-86471 (U.S. patent application No. 917,053) in which in a case where a range in which an object to be recognized exists is approximately determined, positions of a plurality of characteristic portions thereof are detected to combine the positions so as to detect the position of the entire object to be recognized and an apparatus as described in the JP-A-58-134372 in which also in a case where a range in which an object to be checked exists is approximately determined, a window area is set to a characteristic portion of the object to be checked so as to judge acceptance or rejection of a pattern of the object based on the characteristic quantity of the window area obtained as a binary value of the image. Furthermore, in an apparatus as described in the JP-A-59-154574 (U.S. patent application No. 582,555) for recognizing an object taking an arbitrary position and an arbitrary, attitude, a contour of each area associated with black and white generated by binarizing image data is compared with a contour of a recognition object beforehand specified so as to detect the object to be recognized.
According to the related art technology above, the detection of the object is possible when the position of the object is approximately determined or in a simple case where the object exists in an area; however, considerations have not been given to cases where the position of the object is not determined and the contour is complicated such that a plurality of areas are obtained when the binarization is achieved, which leads to a problem that such an object cannot be recognized.